By Sarah DiGregorio May 06, 2009

In the port city of Yokohama, Japan, there is an attraction called the Ramusement Park, an odd hybrid of museum, arcade, and food court dedicated to glorifying ramen—thin, thick, or curly noodles; soy, miso, or salt broth; myriad toppings. If you should happen to visit the Ramusement Park, you can learn the story of ramen's genesis between slurps of noodles and broth: Though the noodle is now practically Japan's national dish—popular enough to support more than 200,000 ramen restaurants—the noodles are actually Chinese in origin, and it was Chinese migrants who brought the springy wheat noodles to Japan in the early 20th century. Japanese cooks remade the noodles to their own taste, and, by the 1950s, Japan was the ramen-crazy country... More >>>